Monday, December 10, 2012

25 Days of Christmas

I have shared my trials and tribulations of failed pinterest ideas. However, in looking about trying to add more holiday ideas to my arsenal since I love Christmas (the secular and the Jesus), I came across the idea of Light Em Up. Basically, it is doing something each day during the month of December to teach your children to give back to others during the holiday season. If my children are like yours, they receive more than their share of gifts from family and friends and such.....I thought this was a great idea, and while I am not perfect at it and am learning and trying to teach Chernet and Tedi why we are doing it...

A couple of ideas we have completed....
~ taping quarters to the pop machines at the children's hospital (aka my work) so that the next person got a free soda
~ pushing in carts at Wal-Mart
~ buying the cashier her favorite candy, which happened to be M&Ms
~ writing thank you notes to 3 people for being good friends to us
~ decorating the house on Daddy's birthday to let him know how special he is
~ baking cookies for the nurses at my clinic to thank them for the last three years
~ taking coffee to the teacher who does the car rider line in the cold(ish) weather each morning
~ buying coffee for the car behind us at Starbucks

These are just a few of the "days" we have done so far. And you know, we do Santa. We do Elf on a Shelf. But we also do Love of others...and giving back and Jesus.....so if you feel one cancels the other, sorry... I don't hate that my parents that lied to me about Santa...I love every single memory of it...Trust me the lies of Santa are NOT the reason for my adulthood "issues".... but what I did learn from my parents (despite their Christmas "fibs") was giving up so others could have...putting others above myself, my children most of all. I only hope in small little ways I impart this to my boys as the Christmases and years come and go.

"I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation. I look at my parents and ask, where were they during the civil rights movement? I look at my grandparents and ask, what were they doing when the holocaust in Europe was occurring with regard to the Jews, and why didn't they speak up? And when we think of our great, great, great-grandparents, we think how could they have sat by and allowed slavery to exist? And I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 yearsfrom now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?"